I see Katie Ormerod is doing her damnedest to not take part in the games...

I was flying back to the UK from a ski holiday last Friday and bumped into some of the early lot of Team GB making their way out to SK. Looked pretty cheerful. It's definitely the games I wish I could get involved in.

Wish there was a winter equivalent of the decathlon...

(Original post by Tiger Rag)
Looking forward to the skiing mostly. I do tend to follow the winter sports (skiing, luge, biathlon) generally over the winter.

I really don't understand how curling works one bit. No matter how much I watched it from Sochi.

(Original post by Doonesbury)
Of course there's plenty of events but, for example, there's not a huge difference between your first 3, and the 2 speed skates. And excelling at 6 quite different skills seems more "interesting"?

I think downhill has to be there. It's the blue riband event (like 100m in athletics).

I do really like the idea of finishing with a ski jump though. lol.

Yes, but when you look at the track and field decathlon you get multiples of the same thing, several running events, several jumping, several throwing... A similar mix isn't unreasonable.

And there's a huge difference between GS/slalom and ski cross.

You'd want a big downhill event, sure. But should it be GS or 'just' slalom?
Ski cross has to be in there because it's a ridiculous but awesome spectacle (and good fun to do).
If you have the endurance XC skiing, then you can have the sprint of the short track skating to counter it.

(Original post by Drewski)
Yes, but when you look at the track and field decathlon you get multiples of the same thing, several running events, several jumping, several throwing... A similar mix isn't unreasonable.

And there's a huge difference between GS/slalom and ski cross.

You'd want a big downhill event, sure. But should it be GS or 'just' slalom?
Ski cross has to be in there because it's a ridiculous but awesome spectacle (and good fun to do).
If you have the endurance XC skiing, then you can have the sprint of the short track skating to counter it.

I think the big downhill event is the downhill

And between slalom and GS I think slalom is the better. GS is sort of a mix of downhill & slalom anyway. Super-G certainly is.

Agree about a long nordic ski event plus short skating sprint. But short track is more of a contact sport, so proper long track is probably less of a lottery.

By the way, there *is* a combined event in alpine. It's downhill + slalom, and is in the Olympics.